EVERYONE remembers Beatlemania. The Fab Four created a fan frenzy wherever they appeared.

Yet a decade after their 1960s' peak, an equally hysterical teenage phenomenon gripped Britain. It was called Rollermania.

The members of the group concerned were so adored that they were forced to turn up at concerts in an armoured car. They sold an estimated 120 million records and generated revenues in excess of £5billion in today's money.

But while former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney is a national treasure and the band's only other surviving member Ringo Starr divides his time between homes in Surrey, Los Angeles and Monte Carlo with his wife, the former actress and model Barbara Bach, the original members of the Bay City Rollers are largely forgotten and lead lives that could scarcely contain less celebrity glamour.

The lead singer is touring with a tribute band, the bassist is a plumber, the rhythm guitarist has moved into Celtic music, the other guitarist is a songwriter and the drummer is a psychiatric nurse following a brief career hiatus caused by a conviction for downloading child pornography.

The story of how these teenyboppers from Edinburgh went from being the world's biggest pop act for 12 months - starting in the summer of 1974 - to leading their current lives, possesses all the most salutary aspects of the ultimate cautionary tale.

All naive young boybands need a svengali, so let's start with him. The Beatles had the very canny Brian Epstein, Elvis Presley the crafty Colonel Tom Parker, and One Direction Simon Cowell. The Rollers had a dodgy truck driver called Tam Paton.

That's not to say he wasn't shrewd. Paton knew that teen idols only retained their lustre in the eyes of their (mostly female) fans if they were perceived as squeaky clean and unburdened by girlfriends. He portrayed his charges as the boys next-door and trotted out the line that they drank milk not alcohol.

You couldn't walk the street. There were 100 girls outside my house every day

Alan Longmuir

He also played on their Scottish heritage, kitting them out in calf-length trousers edged in tartan, Doc Martens and tartan scarves.

In 1974 Paton was 35 and it helped that his proteges were young and impressionable. Eric Faulkner had joined the band as a 21-year-old guitarist in 1972, Les McKeown, who became the lead singer in 1973, was 18, while rhythm guitarist Stuart "Woody" Wood was just 16.

Founding members and brothers Alan and Derek Longmuir, the bassist and drummer, were 25 and 23.

By the time Paton began managing the band they had chosen their name by the straightforward - if random - process of throwing a dart at a map of the United States. It landed "near" the town of Bay City, Michigan.

The Bay City Rollers had had their first hit in 1971, a cover version of a song called Keep On Dancing, but the song that introduced them to the big time was Remember (Sha La La La) in 1974. It reached No 6 in the charts and after that success their popularity exploded.

Their next three releases all entered the top five: Shang-a-Lang went to No 2, Summerlove Sensation reached No 3 and All Of Me Loves All Of You peaked at No 4. By early 1975 Rollermania had arrived. The band were given their own TV series called Shang-a-Lang.

Recollecting this time three decades later, Alan Longmuir said: "You couldn't walk the street. There were 100 girls outside my house every day. You never had your own time. In 1974 I had one day off and that was to go to a wedding."

It was to take more than the odd glass of milk to help the band members cope with this level of overnight fame. And Paton knew just what was required, according to McKeown. "When we got a wee bit tired he'd give us amphetamines," he once recalled.

TOURING: Les McKeown looks much different these days [REX]

"He'd keep us awake with speed, black bombers, and then it becomes a little culture, doesn't it? You end up almost showing off to each other [about] what stupid drugs you've taken."

A little substance abuse was not enough to derail the Rollers' juggernaut. In March 1975 the band had their first No 1 with Bye Bye Baby, which sold one million copies and stayed in the top spot in the charts for six weeks.

At the height of this success, McKeown made the fateful decision to buy a turbo-charged Mustang 351, which had a V8 engine that gave it an estimated top speed of 195mph.

While taking it for a spin through Edinburgh on May 29, 1975, the 19-year-old singer was involved in an accident.

"I was driving at about 40mph and this woman was standing at the side of the road obviously undecided about whether or not to cross," he said later.

"I blipped my horn and it seemed that she had seen me and was going to wait. Then she suddenly stepped out in to the road.

I swerved to avoid her but I had no chance. I was sideways on when I hit her and then crashed through a brick wall."

McKeown and the other occu-pants of the car - a girlfriend and his brother - were unharmed but the pedestrian, 76-year-old Euphemia Clunie, lay dead on the road.

He was charged with causing death by dangerous driving and a court date was set for November. Meanwhile, Paton insisted the show must go on and within 24 hours McKeown was back on stage playing to a packed crowd in Oxford.

He later recalled: "She only lived across the road from me and I wanted to knock on her family's door and say, 'I'm really, really sorry' but I wasn't allowed to do that. I wasn't allowed to go to her funeral."

When his case came to court he was found guilty of the lesser charge of driving recklessly after the intervention of a new witness. He was also fined £150 and banned for a year. But in one sense at least it turned out to be a life sentence.

"I won't say that I think about it every night but there's elements of what happened then that have something to do with head trips today," he explained.

Despite McKeown's travails, the band's success continued. Give A Little Love followed Bye Bye Baby to No 1 and Paton was forging ahead with plans for his boys to storm the lucrative US market.

Hyped as the band that were "bigger than The Beatles", the Rollers landed at New York's John F Kennedy Airport on September 30, 1975, and following a whirlwind publicity tour released a single called Saturday Night.

By the end of December, it had become their first (and only) US No 1. But their popularity waned as quickly as it emerged.

By 1977 punk rock was all the rage. McKeown quit for an ill-starred solo career a year later and Paton was fired shortly afterwards.

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The Rollers stumbled on with a range of line-ups for a decade or so but never had another hit.

Paton had a chequered retirement. He was convicted of gross indecency with teenage boys in 1982 and served one year of a three-year sentence.

In 2004 he was convicted of supplying cannabis but cleared on appeal. Three years later he was cleared of the attempted rape of one of the Rollers' guitarists Pat McGlynn in a hotel room in 1977.

When he died in 2009 he left an estate of £2.7million. Yet the musicians he managed are relative paupers and a group of six of them are still squabbling over the "tens of millions" in royalties they reckon they were denied by record label Arista.

Anyone keen on a trip down memory lane can always buy a ticket to see Les McKeown's Legendary Bay City Rollers - the name arrived at after a £200,000 legal battle with his former bandmates - at the Phones4U Arena in Manchester.

The indefatigable McKeown kicks off an eight-date British tour there on June 20.